Expect to see a slowdown in smartphone sales and a concomitant growth in the use of open source, cloud computing and virtualisation technology as consumers cut back on their "discretionary" purchases while businesses, strapped for credit (because banks won't have it to lend), decide to make the best of what they've got and squeeze the last possible drops of life from the hardware they have, while reducing costs on software as far as possible.

The fact that consumers are going to draw in their horns was behind the abrupt drop in Apple's share price on Monday, after two analysts each cut by $60 (£34) their "target" prices for the stock: RBC Capital's Mike Abramsky from $200 to $140, and Morgan Stanley's Kathryn Huberty from $178 to $115. (Apple was trading at about $110 on Tuesday, having lost about 15% of its value in the Monday selloff of Nasdaq-listed stocks.)

Tim Bray, director of web technologies at Sun Microsystems, put it simply on his Twitter feed (twitter.com/timbray): "Prediction: some pretty severe breakage in the technology industry," he suggested, adding: "Suppose nobody wants to do capital investment but you still gotta get work done. I'm thinking cloud cloud cloud cloud cloud." The advantage of cloud computing such as Amazon's S3 being that it is pay-by-use, rather than capital-intensive.

The squeeze will also push companies towards open-source models, since those don't require expensive licences as well as expensive support. That could be a threat to Microsoft - something that its chief executive Steve Ballmer may have had in mind when he spoke on Tuesday in Norway. "When businesses have less money - they can borrow less money, they can spend less money - that can't be good. When consumers feel the economic pinch, house prices come down. That can't be good," Ballmer said. Most of the big companies, though, don't need to tap banks for the "commercial paper" - short-term large, renewable loans - that has led to the frozen credit markets. Apple and Microsoft have billions in the bank. But telecoms companies often have to get commercial paper to fund big investments.

Meanwhile, for those aiming to start technology businesses, it might - ironically enough - be slightly easier than before to get venture capital cash. That's because the people who have money need to find somewhere to invest it. Gold? Oil? US Treasury bonds? All are a rollercoaster right now. Finding a company with a really good idea and business plan - preferably not reliant only on advertising - looks, by contrast, like an excellent way to make money. After all, in 1976, when Apple was founded, US unemployment was 8.5% and inflation was 8.9%; at present the comparable numbers are 6.1% and 5.4%. But of course in 1976 the US was coming out of recession. Now? It's anyone's guess how bad it will get.